Hi, I have used SMTP Virtual server for IIS before with win xp sp1 and it relayed the messages successfully. However I installed sp2 and now all the messages get stuck in the queue folder in c:/windows/intepub/mailroot/queue. Can anyone tell me what the problem is. I have opened port 25 in the Windows firewall exception list. Is there a solution.

Could it be the problem I found

I came across a problem sending emails out from a website that we host. If anyone is having any similar problems the following may help explain what is going on and provide a work around.

The emails are sent out from application code using CDONTS through the standard IIS SMTP service via a proxy (smarthost) which is the standard smtp server(s).

The symptom is that emails either take a very long time to reach users, or are never being received.

The problem has turned out to be the low level communications between the IIS smtp service and the proxy smtp server. The text of the email message in the DATA message is not terminated correctly by the IIS smtp service. It should have a "." (full-stop) on a separate line at the end of the text, but instead the "." is just added to the last line of the email, not on a separate line unless the email happens to already have a crlf on its end.

The result is that the two ends of the connection hang until the network times out. That email is never sent (it eventually gives up on it) and other emails being sent are delayed for substantial periods of time.

The work around is to ensure that all email messages have a crlf on the end of them, this ensures that the .<crlf> added on the end is on a separate line.

It is unclear what changed to start the problem as no application code was changed around that time (so far as we can tell). It is also possible that it only relates to certain email formats (in this case MIME with a pure text body).

Solving the problem

I had exactly the same problem. I solved the problem. If you have Server software installed, just go make sure your DNS Server is running. Somehow that service stopped. Dont know why.

Originally Posted by derf

I came across a problem sending emails out from a website that we host. If anyone is having any similar problems the following may help explain what is going on and provide a work around.

The emails are sent out from application code using CDONTS through the standard IIS SMTP service via a proxy (smarthost) which is the standard smtp server(s).

The symptom is that emails either take a very long time to reach users, or are never being received.

The problem has turned out to be the low level communications between the IIS smtp service and the proxy smtp server. The text of the email message in the DATA message is not terminated correctly by the IIS smtp service. It should have a "." (full-stop) on a separate line at the end of the text, but instead the "." is just added to the last line of the email, not on a separate line unless the email happens to already have a crlf on its end.

The result is that the two ends of the connection hang until the network times out. That email is never sent (it eventually gives up on it) and other emails being sent are delayed for substantial periods of time.

The work around is to ensure that all email messages have a crlf on the end of them, this ensures that the .<crlf> added on the end is on a separate line.

It is unclear what changed to start the problem as no application code was changed around that time (so far as we can tell). It is also possible that it only relates to certain email formats (in this case MIME with a pure text body).